Today (november 12) exactly 4 years ago, I bought Simpleplanes.

Just like last year, I'm making a little recap of the things that happened to me in SP this year. Let's get into it! Enjoy!

Attention: This is going to be a veeeeery long post. (well not as long as earlier years tho)

A slow start, with an unexpected success

My fourth year started pretty slowly, I didn't have much free time to work on my projects so I was pretty much on a hiatus.
This lasted until Gestour made his AI Boat challenge for his SeaTraffic mod. Since the challenge only allowed less than 100 part builds, I figured I should try something, it shouldn't take long to build something but it's a fun challenge.
My initial idea for the challenge was a nuclear submarine, which had an FT input to make it go underwater when it's being targeted. I had to scrap the idea because it turns out, if an AI vehicle goes underwater, even if it comes back, it is no longer possible to target it again, the game deems it destroyed.

The USS Atlantis (SSN-1000) submarine, which submerges when it is being targeted

It was at this time when the now infamous MV Ever Given cargo ship got stuck in the Suez canal, blocking traffic there and becoming the central topic of news all around the world. So I figured, why not try that. And so I did, creating my new most upvoted build:

The MV Ever Given

Sitting at 178 upvotes at the moment, Ever Given is my most upvoted build of all time, so far

The Dark Side

Thanks to the success of the Ever Given, I rapidly started gaining points, getting closer and closer to platinum. It was a few upvotes from it when my good friend aerodummy that tipped it over, officially making me a platinum rank user! To celebrate this, I built a simplified version of my USS Arizona and put it into a bottle, as well as a build that I've been making for this occasion: The HMS Dreadnought and to top it all, I even built a remastered version of my USS Arizona, with some neat new features, both aestethically and functionally. Dreadnought was also my first ship with an actual, functioning bridge section complete with a ship's wheel and engine order telegraphs. This is a feature that later my USS Oklahoma and some other ships that are still in work would also have.

Into the depths

After I uploaded these two ships, I immediately jumped into my next project, a request made by a follower of mine: the USS Oklahoma. This project would turn out to be far longer than I expected and the fact that I started working on something new so quickly after the release of another one kind of made me burnt out.
However, a new idea saved me from this burnt outness: enter, Project Wreck Exploration, a series of builds aiming to recreate some of history's most famous shipwrecks along with a free diver submarine that can reach them.
And what else to start with than the most famous (or infamous) of them all, the wreck of the mighty RMS Titanic.

She was followed by her sister, HMHS Britannic, the mighty battleship Bismarck and the aircraft carrier USS Yorktown
Around the Yorktown, I sort of lost interest in this project (this is a bit visible on the quality of that build) and put it on hold for now (I'm hoping to resurrect it in the future, but it felt repetitive after 4 in a row)

It took a while

While I was working on the wrecks, I also put some time into working on the aforementioned USS Oklahoma until in early August, she was finally finished. With 2470 parts she became my highest part count build so far, surpassing my USS Arizona remastered (2309).

My USS Texas, USS Arizona and USS Oklahoma sailing together (funfact: together, there are 6337 parts on this picture)

Those tiny screens

After the Oklahoma, I finally decided to do something about the loads of mobile friendly requests Im getting after each high part replica. Thus, I announced Project BM Simples: a project that aims to recreate all of my not so mobile friends builds in a way that lower end devices can handle them too. This project is still in the works but I'm hoping to release the first few builds during winter. Stay tuned for those!

look for this icon if you want to find which builds of mine are mobile friendly tested

The lower partcount, mobile friendly version of the USS Oklahoma

Admiral!

Another thing that happened to me this year is that recently, I got appointed to moderator, then admiral on Eternal Darkness' discord server, Port SP. Thank you ED for trusting me with this, it's an honor!
and to those who don't know about this server: Port SP is a discord server, dedicated to ship building in SimplePlanes. Here, we share ideas, show off our builds and help each other with building as well as hosting some events like movie nights and ship themed build-off challenges. If you are interested in ship building in the game, and would like to become better at it with the help of some absolute shipbuilding masters, while being part of a great community, you should give Port SP a try (click on the name for the invite link)

New horizons

As we are getting closer to the end of this recap, here is a quick announcement: a few weeks ago, I finally got myself a new, much stronger laptop that can handle much more parts. Because of this I'll be able to build much much bigger things (which also makes Project BM Simples much more relevant), so you can expect levels of detail never before seen from me. This can also speed up my building process since game crashes were a constant thing on my old laptop which seriously slowed me down, but this is no longer the case

Closing thoughts

This year wasn't so packed with uploads, but it still had some great achivements for me. I'm hoping to be more active next year.. but I promised this last year too so I'm afraid to promise it again. What I can promise for sure is that I'll try to create new and unique things next year too and try to discover and use new methods and ideas, and build things that very few or no one attempted before.

Closing Screenshots

Just like last year, I want to close this post with a few screenshots I made this year. This is a special one however, as it will include a number of teasers of builds that I'm working on the at moment. Enjoy!

RMS Titanic's sister ship, RMS Olympic - WIP

HMS Speedy (1782), she will be my first sailing ship - WIP

Messerschmitt BF-109A - WIP

SMS Leitha Monitor - WIP

Pearl Harbor battleship row diorama, part of the Diorama Challenge that currently runs on Port SP

A simple fictional German WWI Pre-Dreadnought. Originally, she would have been featured in a teaser video for the HMS Dreadnought, but that video idea was scrapped and she never made her debut

The sinking of the SNS Avalanche, a project that I made just for fun but was never released: a battleship that would cinematically sink (by capsizing) when activating an AG.

The bridge of the cargo ship MV Aquincum (fictional), a little side project I made after Ever Given. I wanted to see how hard it is to control a ship of this size from first person view from the bridge. This was the result.

Port Island, first part of my scrapped series of islands. These islands might make a return in the future

The wreck of the battleship Yamato near Wreck Island, second part of the ship island series. The island itself is very small here but it features a huge seabed section with a lot of ship and plane wrecks to explore. The idea of this island later became the Wreck Exploration series.